


Leafless, bird-abandoned

by Katarik



Category: DC Comics
Genre: Gen, Grief, Mourning, POV Male Character, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-21
Updated: 2011-03-21
Packaged: 2017-10-17 04:46:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/173048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katarik/pseuds/Katarik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I shall hope little and ask for less,"/I said, "There is no happiness."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leafless, bird-abandoned

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rubynye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/gifts).



> Summary from Sara Teasdale's ["Red Maples"](http://www.infoplease.com/t/poetry/flame-shadow/red-maples.html). Title from ["The Silent Folk"](http://www.bartleby.com/271/97.html).

He had expected a monument of some kind. Bruce has never been able to let anything go.

Steph neither was nor is an exception.

The room feels like a museum, two blank masks -- not blank, never truly blank, and Tim cannot be Robin here with both Steph and Jason looking at him. He can only remember that once he had wanted to be -- and empty costumes encased in glass.

It does not feel like a shrine, nor like a tomb.

His own uniform, reflected, wars with theirs. It is one more difference between Tim and Robin.

"You told me once," he says aloud to Jason, remembering the fiercely grinning boy in the red and green suit, "that drop-outs don't make it, and that dead heroes are no use to anyone."

At the time, he had assumed the... visitation... was a daydream, nothing more. Smoky images of Robin and Robin, talking to him as though he had some right to be there. Encouraging him.

He is no longer sure of that. After Secret, after his most recent encounters with Jason, Tim understands that the boundaries between life and death are not as concrete as most people would like to think they are.

The scar on his neck, at times like this, really should ache. His arm, where Jason rebroke it.

He does not have *words* for this sense of loneliness. The languages he knows are too limited to tell them that he wishes they could have met, that they were still here.

That they were heroes, are, and that they are of use.

Tim sits in the silent room and closes his eyes. He does not need to list everyone being Robin has -- not 'killed,' entirely, nor 'murdered,' though it is the word he wants to use -- caused to die.

He cannot list everyone Robin has saved, and he thinks if he focused harder he could half-hear Steph murmuring in his ear about heroes and power and joy and justice.

He is not Robin. They are. He cannot -- he knows this, now -- be what Robin is meant to be. He can be only himself.

But there is a job to do, and Tim can't think of anyone else to do it, and...

And Robin told him once already that he could do this. Tim has no intention of proving him (her) wrong.


End file.
